1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to cryptography, and, more particularly, to a faster method for recovery of passwords.
2. Description of the Related Art
Password recovery today is an important area of research and information security and information systems security. Recovering the password may be necessary in any number of circumstances.
For example, an encrypted disk drive may be recovered in the course of law enforcement operation, and the law enforcement agency may need to perform forensic recovery of the data stored on the disk drive. An encrypted message may be intercepted by a law enforcement agency, and needs to be decrypted. The password may have been created by a former employee, who is no longer available to open the document. Alternatively, the password may have been lost or forgotten, while the document still needs to be opened by the system administrator. Yet another situation involves the system administrator testing documents and their passwords to make sure that the users are not relying on relatively simple passwords, or easily discoverable passwords that rely on information about the users themselves (for example, the user's name, the user's spouse's name, their pet's names, their names spelled backwards, etc.). These are some of the circumstances where a system administrator may need to recover the password, without assistance from whoever chose that password.
A number of conventional methods are known for recovering passwords. These may be based on heuristics (information known or that can be guessed about the user), or on a brute-force approach of sequentially testing the password. Where no heuristics are available, the brute-force approach can take a very long time—at times, unacceptably long.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a fast system and method for recovering passwords.